Homeland Recap: 'You Know How Crazy Everyone Says You Are…?'

This week on Showtime’s Homeland, Saul, Quinn & Co. got quite an earful, while both Brody and Dana got taken for rides.

CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR….? | The hour opens with Dana hopping off a bus in a strange neighborhood, but before we can start theorizing that the lamenting lass is out to score some Blue Sky, we realize she has simply gone to see Mike (whose cozy bachelor pad makes me realize I really need to spruce up the Mattcave here). Dana confides in her mother’s ex-lover about the hit-and-run and her futile endeavor to “make it right.” Later, when getting the OK to hang at Mike’s, Dana asks Mom if she knows why Dad bailed on the plan to go to the cops. The teen quickly shares, “It was that woman Carrie, from the CIA. She showed up and suddenly it was all off.” But wait, Jessica a few episodes made Brody promise to steer clear of blondie! This should get good… but not just yet. Instead, Dana proceeds to ask Mike how it felt to exit their life stage left when her Dad came back from POW-dom (answer: difficult), then she asks for a ride to Columbia Heights, where she offers many mea culpas to the hit-n-run vic’s daughter. But Dana’s peer has only two words for her — shut and up — because apparently she has been paid off by whomever to drop the whole sordid mess. This lack of closure does not leave Dana in a good place.

COME ON, ROGUE | With Dana MIA after the cop shop mess, Brody and Jess fret some, while Carrie worries that this domestic sitch will make the congressman late for his meet with Roya. Jessica reminds Nick that they promised to handle the hit-and-run truth now, but he says the interests of national security prevail. When Jess instructs him to tell the CIA to back off, Brody snaps: “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” After Jess drives off to fetch Dana at Mike’s, Carrie enters the house to move Brody along, only to find him curled up in the hall. “No more,” he begs, but she urges him to remember why he’s doing this. “My family?” he answers. “You were listening…. Everything is falling apart.”

When Brody arrives a bit late for his meet, Roya asks, “What’s going on with you?” He responds with a rant about all the pressures he’s under — including but not limited to helping plot an attack on his own country — then retorts, “Everything is good with you, I hope?” Fearing that Brody has been made and Quinn will cancel their whole op, Carrie has Brody’s audio cut off, then she intercepts him to drive them off to a motel. À la the now-infamous Saturday Night Live skit, this latest rogue behavior irks Estes, but Saul argues that Carrie is angling to repair the situation and preserve their asset. Though Estes worries about having to one day stand “in front of the senate explaining who Carrie was f–king” when the terrorists struck, he allows Saul more rope, again.

DIARY OF A STAGE 5 DELUSIONAL | At the motel, Brody takes stock. “I’ve burned every bridge — with Abu Nazir, with the CIA, with my family…. I’m more alone now than I ever was at the bottom of that hole in Iraq.” Suggesting that Roya will no longer need him, he asks Carrie, “Will you visit me in prison?” She quips she’ll probably be in the cell next to him, “which is not the future I imagined for us.” Curious, Brody asks what she did foresee. “Maybe that if we stopped Nazir, you’d be a real hero, and that fact would somehow make everything you did before not matter.”

Brody’s response gets its own paragraph: “You know how crazy everyone says you are? You’re even crazier than that!”

When Carrie maintains that Brody is not all alone, they fall into a kiss, and then full-on, loud, rigorous sex — all while Quinn, Saul et al listen in from the command post with all kinds of expressions of awkward washing over their faces. “You have got to give Carrie a chance,” Saul tells Quinn, who can’t help but ask: “Is that [the sound of] somebody turning something around, or is that a Stage 5 delusional getting laid?”

ROYA FLUSH | The morning after the romp, Brody rings Roya to apologize for his prior outburst and share his wish for “things to be the way they were,” while Carrie realizes that Quinn’s smirking perverts got an aural peep show the night before. Roya later intercepts Brody in a parking garage, and has him drive them to the countryside, where between the flat terrain and dusk settling in, Carrie and Virgil’s follow car can only get so close, all while seeing nada. Anxious that Brody is about to get offed, Carrie convinces Quinn to let her do one clean pass — during which they see that the Mystery Man who led the Gettysburg assault has joined the roadside rendezvous. Carrie impetuously disembarks from the van and starts to follow the trio on foot, while Saul mulls why this meet took place near the only clearing for miles. Here’s why: Just then, a helicopter descends, and Brody gets shoved on board, while Carrie can do… nothing. Later that night, Brody is back on the ground and being led inside a structure, where he is approached by an all-too-familiar (if shaven) face.